impossible, right now I have nothing. Well, I have this, but I think it might be killing me.”
He leaned over the table, shooting a tentative glance her way, and took her hand in his. The scar on his palm was pale and healed.
His thumbnail was an iron claw and he touched the back against her palm. She hissed at the cold and the sudden feeling of something else. A magic she hadn’t felt in months. He frowned, concentrating, then a smile quirked at his mouth. He let the map roll up and climbed onto the table, folding up his lanky frame and sitting on the table cross-legged. He pulled her hand closer to his face.
“It’s like it’s just being held there,” he said thoughtfully. “I did…” He hesitated. “You should have died from those wounds in the Salt Mines.”
“Blood magic can’t heal,” Parijahan commented.
“No—I didn’t. What I did was give you a touch of my power to keep you alive.” He looked up at her from under his cloud of tangled black hair. “But it shouldn’t have stayed like this.”
“It was there before,” Nadya said. “It’s been there since I stole it in the cathedral.”
“Have I mentioned how annoying that was?” he asked idly as he returned to inspecting her hand. The warmth of his hands against hers was distracting. He isolated her index finger, skimming the pad of his over her fingernail. He made a contemplative sound and showed her his finger.
It was bleeding.
A shiver of foreboding settled in the pit of her stomach.
“Interesting,” Malachiasz murmured. “May I open it?”
“Open it?”
He poised an iron claw over her palm and raised both eyebrows expectantly.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said.
“I wouldn’t take another step if I were you, Kalyazi,” Malachiasz said pleasantly. “This really isn’t your concern.”
Nadya glanced at Kostya and shook her head. His expression was stormy as he returned to the doorway, folding his arms over his chest.
Malachiasz sliced the edge of her palm. She bit her lip. It didn’t really hurt, but a weird feeling of dread horror rushed through her. She shuddered, and Malachiasz lifted his eyes to her face. Her fingers tried to curl closed and he gently pried them back open.
“It’s not my magic,” he said, puzzled.
She frowned. She could feel power that wasn’t her divine magic and had assumed it was his. What was it? And was this why she couldn’t talk to the gods? What if they weren’t ignoring her at all?
Malachiasz pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the blood off her palm.
“I have no idea what this is,” he said.
“I love hearing you say that.”
He laughed. Her heart flipped painfully in her chest and she wanted to kick herself. She wasn’t supposed to be doing this. Not with him, not again. This was exactly what she needed to avoid.
She didn’t pull her hand away from his.
“There is no priest to go to for answers,” Nadya said, her voice low. “If I don’t get answers…” She shook her head. “Maybe nothing. Maybe I’m inflating my own importance and I’ve done all I was meant to. But nothing has changed for the better. Kalyazin and Tranavia are still at war. Serefin might lose his throne to a group of warmongering nobles. You—” She paused, waiting for Malachiasz to acknowledge her words. His clear reluctance was telling. “—have shattered something in this world and it’s only a matter of time before we see how it manifests. I need to get to that temple. But it is surrounded by a forest only the divine can pass through.”
Malachiasz screwed up his face, wrinkling his nose.
“You’re the closest thing we’ve got. But it will be difficult.” More like impossible. It would require something of him that she wasn’t sure he would be truly willing to give up.
Her hand was cradled in his, resting in his lap. He was lightly, absently, toying with her fingers in a way that was softly intimate.
He had betrayed her. Why couldn’t she hate him for that? Why wasn’t the anger that simmered constantly under the surface spilling into anything more?
Why did she want him to weave his fingers between hers and press his thumb against her palm?
“Truce,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
She closed her eyes, swallowing hard, and pulled her hand away. “That’s not enough.”
When she opened her eyes, he had shuttered everything away. They stared at each other for a long time and, oh, she was very aware of the disgust pouring off Kostya, but she